If you have a few dollars left over from Black Friday, TpT's sale is a great way to stretch not-very-much into a-lot-of-materials. Most sellers, including All Y'all Need, have set store prices at 20% off. Enter the (upcoming) TpT code at checkout for an extra savings!

Here are a few things I'll be using this December.

I hung up cards for Christmas Write & Say the Room just before I left for Fall Break. It's a great way to introduce the season - just hang up cards around the room, give students recording sheets, and they do their own homework!

We will also be learning about Texas with these book companion activities for Steve Smallwood's book (not included) Santa is Coming to Texas.

This unit includes 3 games/homework sheets for categories, spatial concepts, and following directions.

Are you getting ready for the holidays? Need some ideas? The Frenzied SLPs are up for the challenge!

For the first time ever, my district is having Fall Break! That means we are off the whole week of Thanksgiving! So this post is a mix of what I used for Thanksgiving last week and what I'm planning for Christmas.

Of course my students made turkeys with feathers. Is there anyone who doesn't do that activity? To make it a little more interesting for my self-contained students, I used random craft objects laying around and put them in a Dollar Tree chips and dip tray. $1 total for this activity. Love that. Note: the chenille stems do NOT glue down.

A LOT of my students need spatial concepts. So many. I'm thankful for my sister Amy who created Thanksgiving Spatial Concepts using movement and Thanksgiving vocabulary. Students have so much fun acting these out!

I'm grateful for my children and their big hearts.
My son, age 20, dressed up like a turkey and ran around with Lisa's Pre-K class.
I can't post pictures, though.
And my daughter and her friend participated in a food drive to benefit local food banks.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Counting blessings, family time, less commercialism, great food, the fall colors - it's a winning combination for me!

One of the parts of my life I'm most grateful for is the connections I've made with The Frenzied SLPs. We are foregoing our usual linkies and running a blog hop.

By reading all the posts and gathering letters for the phrase, you have the opportunity to be one of three winners of a $10 TpT gift card and a $10 Starbucks card! Who wouldn't be grateful for that? Here's how to participate:
1) Read each Thankful and Grateful post.
2) Collect the letter/character at the end of each post. Write them down - they will spell out a phrase!
3) Enter the Rafflecopter on any post by entering the phrase.
4) Visit The Frenzied SLPs FB page for an additional entry.
5) Also visit our FB page to find out if you are a winner after 11/13/15!

I have TONS to be thankful and grateful for. For this post, I'm concentrating on my SLP life.

First, I'm thankful for opportunities. I owe this thinking to Gilmore Girls. While I can't find the exact episode right now, at one point in Season 3 or 4, Lorelei's dreams of opening her own inn are not working out, and instead of focusing on the negatives, she emphasizes the opportunities. So I try to think of things this way:
* Large caseload? More opportunities to make a difference in students' communication
* The corresponding numbers of IEP meetings? More opportunities to work with parents and teachers.
* Home languages other than English and Spanish? More opportunities to learn about other languages and more opportunities to work with interpreting companies.
* More paperwork? Yeah, I haven't figured that opportunity out yet.

Second, a great space! I've worked with the same district for 23 years. While I've worked at several schools, I've always had my hand in the service of one particular school. A few years ago, my principal got maintenance to paint my little corner of the world. It makes me happy!

And finally, connections.

* In my family. All Y'all Need is made up of my sister Amy and cousin Lisa (ALL=Amy, Laura, Lisa). It's given us a connection that I never could have imagined and made us closer.

* At my school, a principal who takes care of me; an AP who helps me schedule; a co-worker who is a bigger Wicked fan than me; a diag who helps me out; and all the teachers and staff who are supportive.

It was a crazy trip, complete with being affected by Texas flooding and the stomach bug.

It was also wonderful! Such great memories!

Here's my daughter, husband, and me.

We got back late Tuesday night and went back to work Wednesday morning.
That's the other reason I'm late.
I've been catching up on sleep this weekend.
We got an early start to Thanksgiving at school with one of my favorite books.

Speaking of Speech was one of the first websites I ever utilized (yes, I'm old).

I still go to it quite a bit. It's good. Check it out.

This week, we'll be talking about Veterans Day.
I live in an area with a huge military presence.
So much so, that students get off Wednesday for Veterans Day.
Staff has professional development.
I want students to know why they have the day off.
So we will be playing Ask Away to work on vocabulary and artic. It's part of this package.

I have already had my parent conferences, so I will be recapping what I did. This year, my conferences were a little bit different. In previous years of teaching kindergarten, I have always discussed what letters need to be worked on. Pre-K conferences are a little different. Some students are coming in with knowing all letters and some students only know the letter that their name begins with. I used my parent conferences to touch base with my parents about how I differentiate to meet the needs of their child. I show them work samples and data from our Beginning of Year assessments. This summer, I won a free grade level subscription to ESGI for my new school!!! My coworkers were so excited to use it! Partly because, I sang of ESGI's praises in my job interview! ESGI test results print outs and flash cards made parent conferences a breeze. I was able to show accurate data without spending hours after school to create a results letter. I also send home alphabet cards for my students to practice at home, a list of games to practice the alphabet at home and a list of ways to practice fine motor skills at home. I organize all of my handouts and data into a data folder so it is easily accessible for each conference. Below is a link to an adorable cover freebie on tpt by Kristine Nannini! I just staple to cover to the front of the folder and it is ready to go.